Dying with Deputies: A Man Asked Augusta Deputies for Help. He Ended Up Dead in a Deputy's Car

Written by: Sam Orlando

STAUNTON, VIRGINIA - It’s becoming a grimly familiar American script: a person in distress calls 911, interacts with police, and ends up dead. The details change. The jurisdictions change. But the outcome, and the official shrug that follows, rarely do.

The latest version played out early Monday morning in Augusta County, Virginia.

Stefan R. Gerencser, 39, wasn’t fleeing, wasn’t hiding, wasn’t in some high-speed chase. He wasn’t even the subject of a criminal complaint. He called for help.

He ended up dead in the back of a sheriff’s cruiser, just steps from the Middle River Regional Jail.

And the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office? They’ve issued a vague, detail-free press release, redirected all questions to the Virginia State Police, and offered nothing close to an explanation. If you blinked, you might’ve missed it.

So let’s lay it out.

The Sheriff’s Timeline—In Their Own Words

3:37 a.m. – Deputies respond to a Sheetz convenience store in Fishersville for a man allegedly refusing to leave. That man is Stefan Gerencser. He agrees to go without issue. No arrest. No force. Nothing notable

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4:33 a.m. – Gerencser calls 911 himself, requesting medical assistance. Deputies and rescue teams respond. He declines treatment, but instead of EMS handling transport, deputies take it upon themselves to drive him to the hospital in a patrol car.

At Augusta Health – Gerencser again refuses care. At that moment, the Sheriff’s Office pivots from “assisting a man in distress” to arresting him for public intoxication. They say he assaults a deputy, prompting a “brief struggle.” Hospital security joins in, helping force him into the cruiser.

So far: a man in visible distress, transported in a police car instead of an ambulance, forcibly subdued at a hospital, and still not medically treated.

5:18 a.m. – He’s now en route to jail. This is where the timeline becomes surreal. Deputies who just minutes earlier had deemed it their duty to get him medical help now transport a restrained man—who had been struggling to stay out of a patrol car—straight to jail.

5:45 a.m. – They arrive at Middle River Regional Jail. When deputies attempt to remove Gerencser from the vehicle, they discover he’s unresponsive and not breathing. Jail staff initiate life-saving measures, but it's too late. Gerencser is pronounced dead in the sallyport.

What the Sheriff Didn’t Say

The press release says almost nothing about what happened inside that cruiser. It contains no mention of:

• Whether any force or restraints were used

• Whether Gerencser was checked for medical distress during transport

• Whether deputies were trained or authorized to make medical transport decisions

• Whether body camera footage exists—or will ever be released

  
  

And most disturbingly, it doesn’t even attempt to explain the glaring contradiction in their own timeline:

They began the morning driving Gerencser to the hospital for help. Less than an hour later, they were delivering his lifeless body to the jail.

The Sheriff’s Office says the incident has been handed to the Virginia State Police. That’s procedure. But it’s not transparency. And it’s not accountability.

The Bottom Line

Stefan Gerencser was alive, walking, and calling for help at 4:30 a.m. By 5:45 a.m., he was dead—on the ground in a jail sallyport, after being in no one’s care but the deputies'.

No medical exam. No family statement. No body cam confirmation. Just a 258-word press release that boils a man’s final hour into a sanitized paragraph and a pass-the-buck signoff.

We’ve requested the body camera footage, and we’ll be asking for the answers the Sheriff’s Office has chosen not to offer.

Because when someone dies in law enforcement custody, the public isn’t owed a press release. It’s owed the truth.